T-Mobile: Growth of Home Internet Offering Doesn't Pose Capacity Issues

T-Mobile won't face capacity issues as it expands its home internet service, executives said on a call with analysts Thursday (see 2210270077). CEO Mike Sievert said T-Mobile probably added more new high-speed internet during Q3 than AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Charter combined, and now serves more than 2 million. T-Mobile is “adding more spectrum across the footprint, both the existing and the new footprint,” said Neville Ray, president-technology: “That's not just in 2.5 GHz now; we're also adding PCS in the 1900 MHz band to those sites. So we have more sites and more spectrum coming online as we move through the future months and years for the company.” Sievert said T-Mobile has “barely tapped” its millimeter-wave assets. “We have fantastic mid-band,” he said. The recent 2.5 GHz auction “has given us potential access, as soon as those licenses are assigned, to significant additional mid-band in areas where we actually already have the towers deployed,” he said. Sievert said new customers sign up predominantly because they’re not satisfied with their contracts with another carrier, “or they switch because they want a different or more powerful network signal,” he said: “More and more they are learning that T-Mobile is the company that offers that.” MoffettNathanson’s Craig Moffett said he remains positive on the outlook for T-Mobile despite broader industry questions. “If there’s a single cause for anxiousness among T-Mobile shareholders -- beyond simply how well T-Mobile’s stock has performed -- it is this: industry subscriber growth is destined to slow,” he said: “With Cable taking a larger and larger share of a dwindling pool of new growth, T-Mobile will struggle to meet expectations for net adds.” Moffett said questions remain about how wireless phone growth continues. “It looks as though industry growth may have reaccelerated in Q3 -- we won’t know until all the numbers are in, but there’s an interesting, if depressing, theory that growth might have benefited from ‘the Uvalde effect,’ with parents feeling an urgent need for their children to have their own cellphones at an earlier age in the event of a school shooting,” he said, referring to the May school shooting in Texas. T-Mobile closed up 7.4% Friday at $151.